


And All Consumeth in Its Eager Fire

by Island_of_Reil



Series: Rova Eimenar: An Anthology [3]
Category: The Goblin Emperor - Katherine Addison
Genre: Autumn, Ball Licking, Body Worship, Clergy, Dogs, Established Relationship, Future Fic, Hypersensitivity, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, M/M, Mild D/s, Overstimulation, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Rimming, Shift to Present Tense in Chapter 2, Worldbuilding, masochistic!Thara
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-06
Updated: 2019-10-06
Packaged: 2020-11-26 05:08:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20924666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Island_of_Reil/pseuds/Island_of_Reil
Summary: The warmth of love on a brisk autumn day and a cold autumn night.





	And All Consumeth in Its Eager Fire

**Author's Note:**

> With thanks to [Zhisanin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zhisanin/pseuds/Zhisanin) for looking this over.

Helis rose from the middle of the Athamara, a trout flapping helplessly in his maw. Water streamed from the thick black curls of his coat as he swam back to shore. He emerged several feet away from Thara, set the fish down on the bank, and began to shake himself out. Thara threw up an arm to shield himself and his quire from the flying droplets, to little avail.

_Helis, for the love of all the gods._

_ SORRY WITNESS. _

From the blithe apology and from Helis’s singular focus on tearing the fish apart, Thara suspected the damned beast did not, in sooth, feel very much regret at having sprayed the Witness to whom he was assigned with river water yet again. Yet he could not find it within himself to suppress a crooked smile. Helis had at least bothered to apologize, which indicated better manners in that regard than a great many nobles. Some of whom Thara was kin to.

He turned his attention back to the river. The day was calm, bright, and a touch too chilly to be seasonable. Diviners from the Orders of Salezheio and Ulis, the natural philosophers at the University, and the farmers who watched the winds and the sky all concurred that this would be the first cold night of the season in sooth. A stray thought of how he would warm himself through it flickered in Thara’s mind and sparked in his loins; by habit and long practice, he stamped the ember out. Though he could easily disappear for twenty minutes to take himself in hand, the night would be all the sweeter if he conserved his desire.

The Athamara flowing past him was as smooth as the day was calm. To be sure, it was giving off its usual notes of gumminess, thanks to the Thu-Atharameise silk factories upstream. Thara could also detect a few minuscule blots of putrefaction, each likely a half-eaten fish or water vole dropped by a predator in flight lest it itself become prey. But there was nothing of great import to jot down. He should thank Ulis, Thara imagined, that Helis had not soaked the pages of his quire on a busier day.

_ WITNESS! TWO-LEGS! _

Thara turned about to see Helis with his head up and his ears and tail pricked. His own ears came to attention under his broad-brimmed hat as his heart began to speed and the spark in his belly rekindled. Not many passed by his station at this quiet bend in the river, but of course this would make Helis more alert to the intrusion. Thara told himself it was like as not just a student on a stroll or a townsman with a fishing rod.

Warmth rose light and heady in his breast at the figure cresting the nearby rise: tall, if not exceedingly tall, his greatcoat plain but well-made and his shoulders filling it well, a wide hat on his own head. Nothing of his garb marked his office, but Thara perceived it in his sure step, in his lifted head and attentive gaze and soft half-smile. This was a man for whom to walk in the world was to see how the gods had fashioned it with such cleverness and beauty: river fitted to bank, branch to tree, hill to sky as a carpenter dovetailed slats of wood.

Again of long habit and practice, Thara schooled his expression to a neutral expectancy as he got to his feet; his ears were already held in check by his hat. Teru approached with his own look of mild, circumspect friendliness, but at the sight of Thara’s companion he broke into a guileless smile.

“Ah, you must be Helis,” he said in his silvered voice, kneeling and proffering his open palm for sniffing. “We are very pleased to at last make your acquaintance; you are a most handsome specimen of Porcharneise water dog.” Helis had commenced to licking Teru’s hand, the great ring upon his finger and all; Teru bore it for a moment as if it were a form of divine unction. Then he straightened again, as Helis resettled himself down upon the bank, and looked at Thara. “And do you and your master speak as men do to one another?”

Thara allotted himself a marginally wider smile. “Not in words,” he said, aware as always of how he sounded the frog to Teru’s nightingale, especially after a day of not speaking aloud. “But an animal assigned to a Witness vel ama will convey tidings and sentiments that materialize as words in the Witness’s mind. Simple words, to be sure —tone and stance carry much of the meaning. The creature in turn has roughly the same comprehension of unspoken words directed at it as it does spoken ones.”

“We see. We are abashed to admit we have never learned overmuch about Witnessing vel ama.”

It was understandable, even for an Archprelate. Witnessing for the Dead, inseparably entwined with funereal prayer and rituals, was under the aegis of the Order of Ulis and ultimately that of the Office of the Archprelate. Witnessing vel ama was another gift bestowed by the gods, but as it was in service to the natural world and the justice of mortals, it was regulated by either the Vigilant Brotherhood or by high-ranking scholars in the natural sciences, depending on where the Witness was stationed. Therefore, novitiate studies touched upon it but lightly.

“Neither had we, until we took this post.”

Teru nodded, then cast an approving gaze about them. “A lovely day to be out by the water,” he said.

Thara inclined his head in agreement. “Orshan’s touch lingers yet, well into the month of Akhalarna. But one can feel the huff of Salezheio’s breath even now.”

“Indeed. The Untheileneise’meire has begun to regain its charming resemblance to an ice-cellar these last few weeks.”

Thara, whose eyes and ears had by now assured him that they two and the dog stood alone, said simply and quietly, “I do not miss it, in sooth.”

“I did not think thou didst,” Teru replied in much the same tone, closing a bit of the distance between them with two steps. He did not move so close to Thara as to raise suspicion in anyone who might suddenly appear over the hill. Helis followed, plunking himself midway between them.

Thara held Teru’s gaze briefly, losing himself for the first time in weeks in eyes the color of the ocean. Eyes that missed very little; eyes that could give as little away as a prelate’s mask or, as now, reveal fathom upon fathom of feeling.

“Thy journey was uneventful, I hope?” he asked.

“It was. I had a brief and pleasant flight from Cetho this morning, and since then I have been productively renewing acquaintances with various seminarians and professors of theology.”

“Enjoyably, as well as productively?” Thara asked drily.

Teru’s firm mouth quirked in a most comely manner. “For the most part. Of Deacon Hemeva, I will say that he did lay out a generous luncheon spread.”

“That was kind of him. One cannot reply immediately with a full mouth and thus has a few moments, if questioned, to retrieve the thread of a deadly dull conversation.”

Teru smiled wryly. He did not take up the obvious points of argument: that one privilege of rank was to mitigate the dangers of such a social misstep, and that among the many benefits of clerical training was a robust ability to put up with tedium. He merely said, “Deacon Hemeva is a good man who is earnest in his mission and effective in his job. If he does not scintillate at table, it is a failing that poses few if any stumbling block to his goals or those of the Archprelacy.”

Warmth pulsed in Thara’s breast again — not the warmth of lust, now, but something deeper, broader, like warm sand under the fingers of a man who has escaped the sea’s churn.

“Art a good man, Teru,” he said, softly again.

For the first time since Thara had met him — other than when they lay together — Teru flushed red. But he did not avoid Thara’s gaze in false modesty. The color of his eyes stood out against that of his cheeks as he said, his voice faintly husky now, “As art thou. I pray wilt understand that someday.”

It was Thara whose cowardly gaze dropped to the riverbank beneath their feet. He chuckled, then forced himself to raise his head again. Teru’s usual color had returned, and his expression was expectant, if mildly rebuking. Declining to acknowledge it, Thara said, “We’ve another few hours before my old tutor expects us for dinner. I must make one more circuit of the stations to the east for the day. Wouldst care to join me for such enthralling entertainment before we retire to the baths?”

Of a sudden, Teru’s eyes narrowed, driving an icicle through Thara’s belly. “Baths?” he repeated, his voice sharpened.

“The main bathhouse at the university. I —” Thara stopped short, bewilderment and anxiety yielding to realization. “Ah, of course. Wouldst have thine own bathing chamber. I haven’t that luxury.”

Teru’s ears relaxed; his flush returned. “Of course. Forgive me,” he said ruefully. “It behooves me to be … vigilant.”

The early-autumn sunlight, still rich at this hour, seemed to dim a little. Thara’s smile felt painful on his cheeks. “I understand,” he said, taking Teru’s long, fine hand in his own small, roughened one. Teru’s fingers intertwined with his own, tightening; amid his warmth, his ring of office dug cold and hard into Thara’s flesh. “Wilt walk with me, Teru Tethimar?”

It elicited the chuckle Thara had hoped for. “I will, Thara Celehar. Anywhere thou wish’st.” 

Words to thoroughly warm a man on a brisk autumn afternoon, even when he must relinquish his lover’s hand before they turn their faces into the wind.

****

“I think she liked thee,” Thara says over the crunch of their boots in the leaf-fall.

Teru’s breath, like Thara’s, fogs the air before him. “I am flattered to hear that, as I liked her very much myself. Not least as the source of thine erudition; but she wears her own quite lightly, as formidable as it is — and as hard as she fought to obtain it.”

“I’m glad,” Thara says, then adds a bit diffidently, “She is not what one might call pious...”

“Most folk are not pious by nature, as know’st by now. Even an Edrehasivar make it fashionable again at court, many will simply play at icons and beads for political advantage. Piety is a desirable thing, of course, but had I to choose between piety and a kind and honest heart I would always fain choose the latter. In any event, thy tutor helped thee come to Ulis. Which is more that can be said of many pious tutors and their charges.” Teru squeezes Thara’s hand lightly. “And, to speak from utter selfishness,” he adds more softly, “she thereby helped thee come to me.”

Thara does not voice his dizzying sense of elation, but merely squeezes Teru’s hand in return.

Ulis has laid the grace of a sharp and silvery night all about them. It came down while they were at Ametalo’s table; after bidding her goodnight, they walked back along the stone-laid path until they came to the turning into the woods. Teru, who has lived life within walls for many years, holds tightly to Thara’s forearm as Thara weaves among the rocks and roots. He has come to know them as well as he once knew the beads on a prayer string, even if he is not privileged to hear the singular strain of music that thrums within them. Save his communion with Helis, and presumably still his ability to Witness for the Dead, only yards from the Athamara all his otherworldly senses fall deaf.

Before very long they are approaching the tiny cabin that is now Thara’s home. Other than the rudimentary lavatory installed within the last two or three generations, it differs little from the first ones built for Witnesses vel ama, more than three thousand years ago. There are some Witnesses who have spouses and michen, and other arrangements are made in those cases. The old-style cabins were fashioned for Witnesses of an eremitical, contemplative bent. Thara would not describe himself so, not quite, but between the baths, the dining hall, and the academic to whom he reports, he does not feel a keen lack of social engagement. 

What he does feel the keen lack of, most nights, is warm skin against his own, warm lips against his ear, the knowing touch of a broad hand. He supposes he _could_ have such things every night: the proscriptions against marnei are rather lax in the university towns, and Witnesses vel ama take no oaths of bodily chastity. But he does not want such things in and of themselves, not anymore. He wants them of Teru. And the price of an Archprelate’s power is the guarding of his reputation.

It is, Thara thinks now — as often he has thought before — a price he himself is more than willing to pay. He is a man of four-and-thirty, not a youth drunk on desire; and that he had no choice in Aveio, that he was bound by honor and duty to bring Evru to justice, does not quite cleanse his lover’s blood from his hands. As strong as his witnessed oath to the river is his unwitnessed oath to shield Teru from scandal. The four or five weeks between Teru’s business journeys to Ashedro are, compared with the grief, scorn, and loneliness Thara has endured, no ordeal at all.

Helis waits for them at the doorstep, tail whipping back and forth. _WITNESS! DIDST BRING FOOD?_

He asks this question every time Thara reappears from the dining halls. Thara’s answer is to spread his hands wide with a dramatically sad smile, as he always does. Helis’s ears droop, though they perk up again when Teru scratches his head and croons to him. He reanoints Teru’s hand with saliva, then sniffs at his coat pockets. _DOES _HE_ HAVE FOOD, WITNESS?_

_No, Helis, he has no food for thee. That is entirely within thine own remit, dost remember?_ Dogs assigned to Witnesses vel ama are trained to hunt their own meals. Thara does not intend to spoil Helis’s ability to provide for himself with tid-bits from the superb table Ametalo sets, or even from the dining hall. Helis looks crestfallen again, but Teru’s fond attentions once again distract him. Thara thinks this is eminently understandable.

At length he says, “Off with thee,” and he imparts a few gentle slaps to the beast’s curly haunch, steering him toward the little dog-shelter. It will suffice until the first hard frost, when he will be allowed to sleep upon the cabin’s hearth.

Tonight, the cabin will shelter Thara and Teru alone.

Waving off Teru’s offer of help, Thara hefts a split log from the woodpile at the southern outer wall and tucks it under his arm. The university pays a strapping town lad to split and stack the wood for him; this service is considered part of a Witness vel ama’s room and board.

Inside, still in his short shearling jacket, he sinks to one knee before the hearth, flint and steel in hand. Teru stands by in his greatcoat, and Thara can feel the heat of those sea-colored eyes upon his nape and shoulders. Even indoors, their breaths fog slightly before them. Thara’s hands shake a bit with the cold, and in sooth with more than the cold. But soon the fire blazes, cheery and broad.

Thara has no sooner risen from the hearth than Teru takes him by the shoulders and spins him about. He finds himself looking up into eyes that make him shiver: narrowed, but their pupils wide.

“I shall attend upon every inch of thee tonight,” Teru says, with the fervor of one taking an oath, “until the sight, the scent, the feel of thy body are woven fast into my soul.”

The tremulous, darting flame of anticipation bursts into wildfire. Thara can only swallow, and when he opens his lips, no words spill out. Teru swoops to capture them, his tongue a sword of satin in Thara’s mouth, and Thara grabs at the woolen collar of his greatcoat to hold him in place. They kiss long and hard, the only sounds their gasps and the crackle and hiss from the hearth.

Teru is the one to break away first. He deftly undoes the buttons of his greatcoat, never breaking his gaze upon Thara, as Thara himself fumbles with his own jacket. Soon jacket, coat, and hats are relegated to the wall-pegs, and Teru is tugging up Thara’s shirt. Thara’s arms lift without any thought to it, although he continues to shiver as much with cold as with desire. His nipples are so hard with both, they hurt. Teru drops to one knee before him and takes one little point of flesh into his mouth. Thara cries out, his entire body jerking; but Teru folds him into his arms — warming him, restraining him — and continues to suck and nibble. When Thara’s breath grows winded, Teru abandons that nipple for the other. Moaning softly, Thara scrabbles and clutches again at Teru’s shirt, mad to feel warm skin against his own.

Again, Teru leans back on his heel. Holding Thara’s gaze, he pulls the shirt off his own body in one swift movement, so swift that it is but a fraction of a second that their eyes do not meet. The shirt is tossed to the nearby chair. Then the two of them are pressed together again, Thara’s fluttering belly and throbbing loins against Teru’s broad chest, as Teru continues to mouth Thara’s wet, glistening nipples.

Thara reaches down to smooth and fondle the tips of Teru’s ears between his fingers; Teru’s quiet moan is muffled against Thara’s flesh. His eyes close, reverently, and Thara pictures him so on his knees before an altar of Ulis, of Anmura, of Cstheio. It is an analogy that would shame Thara were he in a cool, detached frame of mind, but here, now, the wisdom of desire makes it completely meet. And then Teru opens his eyes and pierces Thara to the root with them, his lips still working at Thara’s breast. Unbidden, the lines of the ancient Anmureise prayer reverberate in Thara’s mind: _I gird myself in worship,/for I kneel in power._

At length, Teru shifts to the center of Thara’s ribcage and begins to kiss his way down his belly. The light, tickling touch of his lips, the resurgence of anticipation, make Thara tremble in his embrace. When he reaches the waistband of Thara’s trousers he gently undoes the first button, fingers deft and — Thara envies him for it — unshaking. Then he reconsiders. “Perhaps it would be wise to remove thy boots first.”

Thara raises his left foot from the floor, and Teru gently pulls the boot from it and sets it aside. He peels off Thara’s sock, then plants a soft kiss upon the instep of that foot. Thara twitches again, unprepared. Teru sets boot and sock aside as Thara shifts his balance, and then he attends to the other foot, but this time he does not prolong the tension with a kiss to it. He returns to Thara’s waistband and undoes the remaining buttons. Trousers and linens he draws as one down to Thara’s knees, and he studiously ignores Thara’s desperate cockstand to focus on working the garments all the way down to Thara’s ankles. Again, Thara lifts each foot in turn for him. Teru pushes the pile of shed clothing a few inches away, then begins to kiss his way up the inside of Thara’s right leg.

He stops perhaps an inch before reaching the underside of Thara’s stones, then meets Thara’s eyes again, his own a vast infinity of tenderness. For a heartbeat, Thara’s breathing ceases altogether. It starts again with a loud gasp as Teru suddenly palms Thara’s cock, thumb swiping over the wet tip, and then presses the length of it against his cheek.

“Teru... please,” Thara croaks.

“What wouldst have me do, my beloved?” Teru inquires mildly, his thumb now idly stroking the shaft.

_“… something._ Wilt drive me mad if keep’st teasing me so.”

“I told thee.” He will drive Thara mad with his sheer _calm,_ damn him. “I intend to salute every inch of thy body, or as near as I can manage, this evening. Dost not wish me to have all the details of thee committed to memory, when we spend so many long weeks apart?”

“How has so wicked a man become Archprelate?” Thara huffs.

Teru does not reply to this; his face is a near-perfect blank but for a telltale twitch at the corner of his lips. Thara has no other warning before he is seized by the hips, spun about once again, and pushed a few staggering steps toward the bed.

Obediently he bends, folding his arms upon the mattress-sheet and lying his head upon them as he arches his hips. A warm palm splays itself upon the center of Thara’s back, gently pushing his torso flat to the bed. Again, Thara lets Teru arrange him as he will, and he raises his hips higher to emphasize his surrender. He murmurs in delicious anticipation as Teru parts his thighs, then his buttocks — and gasps when warm breath ghosts over his hole. Evru pleasured him like this sometimes, shocking him gravely the first time. But he had not thought that Teru…

When warm lips brush against his entrance he utters another soft cry. Teru’s reply is to thumb him further open and to wetly mouth the little ring of muscle. Thara whimpers into the mattress as his body responds, muscles slackening, nerves awakening as Teru’s tongue dances over them. His cockstand is painful now, and he slips a hand beneath his belly to rub at it.

Suddenly his spit-slick cleft is bared to the cool cabin air. “Hands on the bed,” Teru commands, Archprelate surfacing in lover. With a racking inbreath of desperation, Thara again obeys.

Teru’s attentions return fourfold. With flattened tongue he descends to caress the fingernail’s breadth of sensitive skin forward of Thara’s hole. Then with the tip he traces the seam that divides Thara’s stones, as far down as he can reach, and he lingers a while to gently mouth one testis, then the other. As Thara’s breath grows more and more ragged, Teru retraces his path upward again, lapping steadily at the thin, quivering skin before returning to Thara’s hole — and pushing the tip of his tongue inside.

Thara shifts his right hand to his mouth to whine against it, then bite at it, as Teru’s tongue delves deeper and deeper into him. The sensations that shoot through him set his hips to rocking, but Teru’s strong hands hold him fast, even as they knead his buttocks, so that Thara can neither thrust against the mattress nor grind himself into Teru’s lips and chin. His wits are unspooling, and the pitch of his moans rises higher than he has ever managed since early adolescence.

The soft, wet pressure inside him relents as Teru’s mouth slips lower once again — and it is replaced at once by the firm, knowing intrusion of a forefinger. The touch lays siege to the knot of nerves within Thara, again and again, sending anbaric pulses from the root of his cock up to the tip. His stones begin to draw as he ascends the precipice — surely, Teru can feel this, perhaps even see it in the firelight? “Teru—” Thara chokes out, but Teru only licks him more firmly, presses more firmly. Thara’s moans break apart into cries and whimpers that scatter to all four corners of the cabin as he begins to shoot seed onto the mattress-sheet, Teru’s tongue and finger never ceasing to move until Thara has collapsed to the bed.

He can do naught but lie there at first, gasping with his cheek to the sheet, the trail of Teru’s saliva cooling in the tepid air from his stones to his hole, sweat cooling everywhere on his trembling skin. But Teru’s harsh breathing above him spurs him to, with effort, crane his head over his left shoulder. “Why’d’st not stop when I warned thee?” he pants.

“Because I wanted to see thee like this,” comes the reply, shockingly husky for Teru.

“With no satisfaction for thyself?”

Teru shakes his head. “I’m no stripling,” he says breathlessly. “I can wait half an hour for thee to rally.”

“Half an hour be damned, take me _now.”_

A moment’s pause; then, “Art sure?”

“Very sure,” Thara says, locking Teru’s darkened eyes with his own intent gaze. “Wanted’st to see me like this, pleasured witless and perfectly arranged for thy delectation. Wilt not take thy reward for’t?”

This time, Thara notes with gratification, Teru’s hands do shake somewhat on the vial of oil he slips from his trouser pocket. He then sheds boots and trousers posthaste, anoints his cockstand as quickly as possible, and settles the head against Thara’s hole.

He enters him as gently as he can, despite the urgency of his desire. It is of little consequence, for by its nature his turgid flesh crowds Thara’s insides, rasping against the oversensitized inner nerves with every thrust and setting off jangles of sensation — painful, painfully delicious — throughout Thara’s loins. Thara clenches his fist and sinks his teeth into it, whimpering as his cock twitches to half-resurrection beneath him. He shuts his eyes and concentrates on Teru’s warmth suffusing him, Teru’s skin sliding moistly against his own, Teru’s hot wet tongue curling about his ear-tip, Teru’s fingertips imprinting themselves upon the flesh of his waist.

It it an agonizingly long time, and still far too short a time, before Teru’s strokes grow choppier and he fills the air with silvery cries — _ah, ahh, ahhh_ — every new iteration of the syllable more infused with wonder, more tremulous with lightning-strikes of pleasure. Then his beautiful voice is choked short as his climax takes him, and takes his ability to be gentle: he clasps Thara to him, brutally tight, and his hips buffet Thara’s like a storm-wave. Thara’s cock has revived to barely three-quarters full under the pitiless stimulation, but a weak wave of fresh seed pulses from it, and his vision runs blurry with tears as he sobs and whines.

Teru braces himself on his forearms, rather than collapse onto Thara entirely. Short, rough gasps punctuate his panting, and Thara realizes that his own body continues to clutch spasmodically at Teru’s unextricated, softening cock. With a soft kiss to Thara’s nape, Teru corrects the problem, easing himself out smoothly and with his usual gentleness. Nevertheless, Thara utters a final whimper. Every nerve from his cockhead to his arsehole throbs with abrasion, and his limbs might as well be made of lead. Or jelly. Or some combination of both, explicable to the gods alone. Somewhere in his mind, he knows that later he will not thank himself for falling asleep atop a pool of his own spunk, with Teru’s dripping out of him to boot. This knowledge does not provide him with the wherewithal to do aught about it.

“I cannot very well curl up beside thee an art sprawled so across the bed,” Teru points out sensibly. His breath has started to return to him.

“My condition is thy fault in its entirety,” Thara rejoins in a mumble. “May’st shift me as see’st fit.”

With a snort of laughter, Teru complies. He turns Thara over, tenderly thumbs the remaining tears away, then finds a cloth and the water-jug. As he sponges the fast-cooling seed from Thara’s lower body, Thara twitches afresh and sucks in his breath. “Sorry,” Teru whispers, looking pained himself. He then does his best for the mattress-sheet, though after a short while it becomes obvious that only the laundresses will be able to finish the task and he leaves off at it. Then he rearranges Thara upon one side of the bed, draws a few blankets over him, and disappears briefly into the little lavatory.

He returns before long, which is all to the good. The insistent pressure of Thara’s bladder has restored some measure of cunning to his limbs, and he stumbles from the bed for his own ablutions, shivering. When he returns, Teru draws him up against him, Thara’s back to his chest, and carefully hooks one arm and one leg about him. Thara in turn folds his free arm over Teru’s.

Just as Teru swore to commit all the details of Thara to memory, Thara now, eyes half-closed, lets Teru’s warmth and scent and _there_-ness imprint itself deeply into his flesh, his marrow. He will draw upon this sweet reserve come the dawn, when they both must needs rise from this warm bed into indigo shadows and grey frost, pressing their knees to the worn wooden floor to offer up their prayers to the gods, then parting with one last kiss. He will fold it about him through the long weeks ahead, as Salezheio’s breath worries at his ears and nape and the earth falls to slumber around him, until the sight of Teru cresting the hill by the river, walking with grace in the world fashioned by his gods, Thara’s gods, rises light and heady in Thara’s breast once again.


End file.
